5 Hit Movies That You Probably Didn’t Know Were Based On Comic Books

3) Oldboy

A sizeable portion of film fans may be aware that Spike Lee’s 2013 movie Oldboy is an American remake of Park Chan-wook’s South Korean movie of the same name,  but fewer may be familiar with the fact that Chan-wook himself adopted the screenplay from a Japanese manga series released during the mid-nineties. Indeed, the influence of Garon Tsuchiya’s comic book appears to have no bounds, having also inspired a Bollywood movie (directed by Sanjay Gupta) entitled Zinda in 2006.

Each of the Oldboy adaptations depict a male protagonist who is hurtled into a cell and mysteriously held captive for a number years. Suddenly released, he plots to find the men who imprisoned him and swears revenge. Differences do exist between the manga strip and the film adaptations (with Spike Lee’s version subject to an inevitable degree of Americanization), but given how Oldboy unfolds in such a calculated way, it’d be foolish to reveal them. Regardless, whichever version you decide to take in, don’t expect a pleasant pain-free ride. Or a chirpy, uplifting ending for that matter.